Oceanside settles lawsuit brought by 4 arrested for street preaching

OCEANSIDE – In a move hailed as a victory for freedom of speech in every city in the nation, Oceanside has settled a lawsuit brought against it on behalf of four men arrested last year for preaching on a downtown street corner.

The suit was settled for $35,000.

It would have cost a lot more to try the case through the courts, interim City Attorney Anita Willis said yesterday.

“It’s in the best interest of the city to make this go away,” she said.

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Under the terms of a compromise, Willis said, the city agreed in federal court in San Diego to have a judgment entered against it but admitted no fault.

Oceanside police arrested the men as they preached to passers-by Aug. 3, 2002, at Pier View Way and Coast Highway. Police said they acted on the complaint of a nearby business owner.

The men were members of West Coast Baptist Church in Vista, which, said the Rev. Philip Clark, its pastor, has sent preachers to the streets of Oceanside for 30 years.

Clark said yesterday that church members have continued preaching despite the arrest and a phone threat “to keep our blankety-blank preachers out of Oceanside.”

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Police said the case stemmed from a citizens arrest on behalf of the business owner who found the preaching annoyed her customers.

But Clark said he dropped the name of that business owner, Regina Leiss of the Longboarder Cafe, from the lawsuit when he found out that police had asked her to sign the complaint rather than vice versa.

Leiss could not be reached for comment.

The suit had been filed on behalf of Joshua D. Beltramo, John D. Ryan, Wayne J. Yasinski and Jose G. Serrano.

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Clark said Ryan and Serrano have continued to preach but Yasinski has moved to the Valencia area, and Beltramo, a Navy petty officer, no longer preaches, worried about the effect the arrest could have on his military career.

The $35,000 settlement amount does not require City Council approval. It calls for $17,500 to be divided among the four men who suffered the humiliation and inconvenience of the arrest, and the other half to go to the attorneys, Clark said.

“But, most of all,” he said, “it paves the way for anybody who wants to take a message to the streets, be it religious or political.

“Unfortunately, what happened to our clients in Oceanside is not an isolated incident in this country,” attorney Brian Fahling of the American Family Association Center for Law & Policy in Tupelo, Miss., an organization specializing in suits involving constitutional issues, said in a news release.

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“The uncompromising message of the Gospel is running into an increasingly intolerant culture,” he said. “I am hopeful that this judgment will serve as a warning to other municipalities who are tempted to treat street preachers as though they are common criminals.”